A Simple Way to Monetize your WordPress Blog – Content.Ad Review

In this post I’m gonna talk about monetizing my WordPress blog, namely about content.ad advertising network.

It’s been a long time since my last review, and since my last article on my IM blog, but here I am back with fresh news on my blogging experience. This time it’s about content monetizing, not too far form the idea behind SteemIt. I was analyzing my blog’s traffic, and apparently most of it is organic and coming from Google search results, which is a good thing. It means my posts are well ranked by Google and they keep appearing on SERPs. So, I was thinking, why not putting this traffic to a good use, like monetizing it.

My Attempts to Monetize my WordPress Blog

In the past I tried several times to activate AdSense for my blog, even from several Google accounts, but every single time I got rejected. I was also aware of this ad banner blindness syndrome specific to most of the web surfers, which could affect the AdSense ads effectiveness anyway. So, in order to avoid all these issues I started to look for alternate options for monetizing my WordPress blog. I was aware of a different kind of ad publishing method, generically named native advertising.

Here’s an explanation of what native advertising is, according to https://www.sharethrough.com/nativeadvertising/:

Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. Native ads match the visual design of the experience they live within, and look and feel like natural content. Native ads must behave consistently with the native user experience, and function just like natural content.

So, the native ads design is supposed to blend into the design of the web pages they are displayed in, having the same look and feel as the rest of the website.

My Choice for Content.Ad

I tried to get approved by several such networks and eventually got accepted by Content.Ad. I quickly activated it on my WordPress blog and started to get some results after a couple hours, literally! At the time of writing, which is after first 2 days after activation, I already earned just above $1.50 and it’s supposed to improve over time. According to them, after activation there is an automatic adjustment period that lasts for about a week. In this period they will adjust the ads to be shown on your website by analyzing the actual interaction of your visitors with the ads.

Yes it’s not much, you might say, but think about it: it pays for my hosting service and beyond. It’s like having free hosting, which makes it the best solution for a blogger on budget!

And here are the results I was talking about:

And these results correspond to about 1000 page views per month, according to Google analytics.

There are 2 type of actors gravitating around an advertising network, and content.ad makes no exception: advertisers and publishers.

The advertisers are those who are creating advertising campaigns. Their goal is to get visitors of their ads to follow the links to their targets. The advertisers are paying to the network, usually on CPC basis.

The publishers are those who are using their web real estate to expose those ads to their visitors. The publishers are paid with a fraction of the money paid by advertisers, depending on the clicks they receive on the ads. The CPC received greatly depends on the location where that click originated. In other words, not all clicks are created equal.

How I Did It

My goal was to monetize my website, so my role in this scene is that of a publisher. I don’t want to spent money on ads, I only want to earn money by exposing those ads to my traffic.

In order to get started, just go to content.ad and sign-up for a new account, then add your domain. Also, don’t forget to also complete your profile and add your payment method so they could start evaluating your domain.

What you should do next is either copy the widget code and use it in your website, or, if your website is WordPress based, just install Content.Ad free plugin and your all set. The usage of the plugin is quite straight forward.

The only challenge using Content.Ad could be getting your domain approved. In my case, my domain was approved in 2 days with no problems at all. If you tried Content.Ad and you got rejected, the only reason I could think of could be your content not being good enough for them. Before requesting a new approval, take the time to revise your content and make it better.

Conclusion

I found Content.Ad to be a good match for monetizing my WordPress blog. It has all the basic features you need to start, and it doesn’t cost anything. On the other hand, I’m open to other ideas and experiences and I challenge you to comment below.

PS: Due to the nature of the content pushed by Content.AD, which I consider not quite appropriate for this blog’s niche and style, I decided to disable it. It is definitely something to be considered, but on websites that are specially designed for monetizing via native ads and ad arbitrage in general.